Memorial tells Flight 191 victims 'we never forgot'

More than 30 years after Flight 191 crashed after takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in 1979, killing 273 people, a monument is being unveiled Saturday in Des Plaines' Lake Park, near the crash site.

Jennifer DelgadoTribune reporter

Kim Jockl stood proudly Saturday with about 1,000 other people in Des Plaines before a new memorial to the horrific plane crash 32 years ago that killed her parents and every one else on board.

It had been an uphill effort. But survivors of the 273 people who died when American Airlines Flight 191 went down in a fiery explosion in nearby Elk Grove Township on May 25, 1979, now have a place to honor their loved ones.

“I’m thinking of all the spirits on Flight 191 sitting on a cloud above and saying, ‘Yes, they remembered,’” said Jockl, who wore a button bearing a photo of her parents, Bill and Corrinne Borchers. “We remembered. We never forgot.”

In an age when the 9-11 terrorist attacks and other tragedies have overshadowed what at the time was the worst aviation accident in U.S. history, getting the memorial wall of victims’ names built was challenging.

It started with Jockl, an assistant principal at Decatur Classical School in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood whose former students learned she had lost her parents on the Los Angeles-bound flight.

The group pushed for two years to build the memorial. Finally, American Airlines agreed to foot the $21,500 cost, according to officials at the ceremony, and a location for the memorial was found inside Lake Park in Des Plaines.

At the memorial dedication, the victims' names were read aloud and those who gathered shared stories about the people they lost. Others sprinkled pieces of dirt on the 2-foot-high, concaved-stone wall whose interlocking bricks bear the name of each victim.

For days after the crash, Jim Vickery of Momence, Ill., lived in disbelief that his wife Martha was onboard the plane. He and his children repeatedly called American Airlines and a Los Angeles hotel, hoping she had changed her plans.

The pain of her loss felt singular. On Saturday, they felt comforted by the crowd.

“You look around and you realize you weren’t the only one who went through this,” said Vickery, 74.

Casey Adams Binstadt flew in from Los Angeles with her brother Gray Adams, 36, for the ceremony. Their father James W. Adams III was on his way home to celebrate Binstadt’s second birthday that day.

Before the ceremony began, the siblings made a quick stop near the crash site for the first time.

“It feels like his body died over there and his spirit floated over here,” said Binstadt, 34, standing near the memorial.

Nancy Howell, of Knoxville, Tenn., shaded a blue crayon across separate sheets of paper over a brick with her mother’s name, Elaine Howell. She planned on taking the pages back home.

During previous trips to Chicago, she’s only thought of the crash, said Howell.

“Now, I can think of something else,” she said, as tears fell down her cheeks.